Beyond Organic Local Farm Products

Picking The Right Home… For Our Bees

If you are at all like us, when you hear about beekeeping you think little white boxes stacked alongside a field filled with buckets of honey. It turns out those bee hives have a name: Langstroth Hives. They are great for large scale commercial beekeepers, as well as people who want the convenience of a wealth of products and accessories all designed to work with your hive. But did you know there are other options for beekeeping on your homestead?

Langstroth Hives - Source: http://bit.ly/Hpyfa6

Enter the Top Bar Hive. Top Bar Hives are probably the next most popular hive style after Langstroth Hives. The key difference is that rather than the bees building their comb within frames of the Langstroth Hive, in Top Bar Hives bees build comb off the bars lining the top of the hive.

Top Bar Bee Hive - Source: http://bit.ly/acfTI8

Martha and I found that all the accessories and equipment “needed” to keep bees using Langstroth Hives was quite overwhelming. It was difficult to discern what was REALLY needed and what was just a gimmick. Not to mention the up front cost of everything you need to get started with Langstroth Hives seemed ridiculous considering bees are wild creatures that most often live in hollowed out trees! The over-commercialization of Langstroth Hives and the prospect of developing new skills to design and build our own hives drove us to the Top Bar Hives for our homestead.

Check back later to read about how we got started with the design and materials for our Top Bar Hives!